1953 Round 1 - South Pacific Road Racing Championships [Jan 15th]

Just wanted to quickly reach out here as well to congratulate the Lancia boys on a well deserved 1-2 and all the other drivers who won their classes and finished. Despite the start difficulties which, let's face it, can always happen with a mod track, I had a blast in my V12 attack boat and can't wait for Crystal Palace!
Thanks as well do Isidoro for an absolutely fantastic battle of Lagonda vs Jaguar before the animated cows claimed his life, I can't wait to do it again!
I hope in lap traffic I wasn't too gung-ho and scared people out of the way, especially in the last 2 laps where the brakes finally decided to pass on to the afterlife.
Great race guys, can't wait for the next one!

Disappointing race for me. I was hoping I could stay in touch with Rhys although he was a good second a lap faster than me. With all the pre-race stress I wasn't too sharp in qualifying, and my best laps were spoiled by traffic, so I was lower on the grid than expected.

With the grid issues I elected to start dead last from the pits to make sure everybody had managed to start, so Rhys was long gone and there was no hope of catching him.

It was good fun though, I spent 35 laps chasing Toby's Cunningham and Mark's Maserati. I was a tad faster but I kept giving away too much time letting the leaders lap me. In retrospect I maybe should have been less gentle but, still, better that than having spoiled anybody's race.

Finally on lap 40 I was right up there with Toby and Mark, but in the excitement I overdid it a bit on braking for turn 1 and hit the fence on the outside. I had not practiced with low fuel so wasn't too confortable with the car in those latter stages.

It wasn't too big a contact so I was confident the car was ok, but it wasn't and I lost it at the hump right after that. Spun, hit the fence and rolled. Car still had four wheels and I probably could have brought it to the pits, but I was too disappointed and didn't want to get in anybody's way with a damaged car so I parked it.

Too bad as a top 10 with good 3000 class points was possible, although catching them was one thing but passing them was another and was by no means a given .

Spent the last 10 laps watching the race, notably the great Toby and Mark scrap !

Grats to Tom for his superlative drive to Martin and Erwann for their class wins and to all finishers.

Sorry again for the starting grid mayhem... Lesson learned, won't happen again.

After patiently starting from the pit, he drops from 15th on the grid to 23rd place. Alright, I had a safe pace and that's what happened, passing competitors and always with Rhys Gardiner in a continuous chase since I managed to pass him, it was a constant shadow and that lasted until lap 29, being in 9th place, I lost concentration on T1 and damaged the right rear suspension.
Ok, I went to the Pit with the steering wheel crooked, driving carefully so as not to disturb the other competitors.
105 seconds of repairs, I return to the track in 17th place and... another loss of concentration in T1 and a new crash similar to the first.
Back to the pit stop and another 150 seconds of repairs and frustrated as my race was flawless and consistent.
I returned to the track in 20th place and, without making any mistakes, managed to go up to 16th place, 5 laps behind the leader.
Congratulations to Tom Dee on a brilliant race and victory.
It was an interesting race, difficult to start but once it started, it was fantastic!

For those who want it, the server replay is available for download.

Unfortunately, I kept having to hardware reset and software reset my wheel each time the race restarted. With a headset on. So I got lost with the final start procedure and eventually got going about 30 seconds late. Had fun though until I got caught out over the hump . Silly error. The car had felt bad there all night, for some reason, so I (thought I) was being careful. Anyway, a fun first race but annoyed with myself for the silly mistake. And I was losing too much time whilst being lapped.

For posterity and those who are not on Discord, here's also my video recap:

Thanks for taking the time to add those to the forum mate

Thanks Martin, you allow me to finaly see these cars in action, looks like great and clean racing from everyone